What is and What Could Be
by Freidon
Summary: "It was the first time the djinn had ever targeted a specific prey, before. She had spotted victims that suited her, stalked them, but she had never watched their every move, tracked them for months on end. Dean Winchester was different. He had slain her father." An alternate take on the djinn attack in 6.1. Not a romance.


**What is and What Could Be:**

_This is fanfiction . net. Are disclaimers really needed, at this point?_

It was the first time the djinn had ever targeted a specific prey. She had spotted victims that suited her before, stalked them, but she had never watched their every move, tracked them for months on end.

Dean Winchester was different.

Few had the willpower to break from a djinn's venom. That was the venom's strength, really. Every human had regrets, longed for things to have gone differently. They were such naive, hopeful creatures, all it took was a small dose for them to believe what they wanted. It was a powerful temptation. All her victims fell for it.

But this man, this _Winchester_, had not only resisted it, but slain her own father. Djinns were largely solitary creatures, so she wasn't particularly attached to her sire…but somehow this….this was different. This prey intrigued her. Haunted her.

So she hunted him. If her prey moved, so did she. But the man was slippery, unknowingly elluding her as he traveled the country-side. He never traveled in any particular pattern, but the djinn found the man's weakness. She always did.

An old love interest, it would seem. The woman wasn't just another bartender, either. She had a kid. A child the man was attached to. A son, perhaps? How appropriate then, that she should kill this boy's father for slaying her own.

Even after the man left, the djinn stayed. She had hungered for this long, she could wait a while longer. Winchester would return. The djinn had seen enough of his dreams to know that. The man wanted peace, wanted a family. When he needed comfort, a shelter, he would come back. He would try to recreate the perfect world he had dreamed of so long before.

And she would be waiting.

She kept an eye on the place. She reached out to brethren she had never met, hadn't seen in years. They all worked alone, but something about Winchester ignited their veins, boiled their blood. Yes. For this hunt, they could work together. They would tear the man's mind to shreds.

He was predictable. His brother dead, his angel vanished, he returned to his woman's arms. The djinn seethed. She wanted him now, wanted the feeling of his throat in her hands. But she waited. She waited for weeks for just the right moment.

She came at him from behind. He was working on his car, patching it up from his last battle. With the impala's low grumble and his reflexes dull from grief, he never even heard her coming. Her hands wrapped around his neck, the venom glowing blue across her fingers.

"You made it through that last trip, so how about a big fat double dose?" He jerked back, but it was too late. The venom's strength had already sent his brain reeling, his muscles jerking violently. She held him still for a moment and leaned into him, her lips brushing against the tips of his ears.

"Tell me, Dean Winchester. What is it that you want, more than anything in the world?" He didn't have to speak. Their minds were one. She could see his every grief, his every insecurity, his greatest wish. They were all one in the same.

Sam Winchester.

He wanted his brother to be alive.

He once desired a normal life, but now that he had it, he wanted anything but. He was a soldier. He craved the battles, the long car rides, the sound of his brother's laughter. Even if it meant the return of angels and demons and whole the damn apocolpyse, he wanted his brother back.

A slow, cruel smile flitted across the djinn's lips. Her own brothers watched from behind, their arms crossed.

"I can do that."

**—-**

Dean woke up to his brother sitting across from him. Sam explained the truth, explained how he had been alive this whole time, watching him. How he had saved him from a pack of djinns, how Dean had almost died. Something seemed off. Suspicion lingered in the back of the hunter's mind. It was almost as if Sam wasn't real, as if…as if it wasn't really him.

His mind clung to that thought, playing with it. Maybe Sam didn't have a soul. Maybe hell had driven Sam insane. He was never quite the way Dean remembered him, but at least he was alive. His brother was alive.

_"That's for our father, you son of a bitch."_


End file.
